Ep9: The Benefits of Being Bored with Dr Aric Sigman

The Working Parent Podcast

In this delightful podcast Dr Aric Sigman explains why boredom needs an image makeover. Boredom is a constructive part of the childhood experience, vital for our children’s mental health, creativity and future success. All too often we feel obliged to ‘cure’ our children’s boredom or make every second count in the weekly schedule, but we need to make space for boredom and help our children develop the ability to withstand a lack of novelty and stimulation. What they mustn’t learn, Aric says, is the solution to boredom comes outside of themselves - buy this, play that, smoke this, eat that. Instead they need to develop strategies to solve their inner boredom and they need time to practice this. In our always on, too much choice, electronic media world Aric provides useful strategies for parents to bring boredom back. He does not leave adults out of the equation either. We too are increasingly in need of stimulation and addicted to novelty! What might we be modelling to our children?

Dr Aric Sigman (http://www.aricsigman.com/index.html ) is a health education lecturer and has delivered numerous talks for The Parent Company (www.theparentcompany.co.uk) on screen time/dependence, alcohol, ‘soft’ drugs & vaping, preventing mental health problems, body image, and understanding boys, sex and relationships topics. He is a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on a Fit and Healthy Childhood, co-author of 3 of its latest reports on mental health in childhood. He publishes medical papers on health and development subjects and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology, Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society, and a Chartered Scientist awarded by the Science Council. He is the author of five books (http://www.aricsigman.com/books.html) on health and development-related topics, including Getting Physical, which won The Times Educational Supplement’s Information Book Award.

Here is a link to the survey with the quote from a very wise dad on page 19 https://www.suittiestroller.com/dad-survey-report

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